Horizon
by Charis M
Summary: “At first she thinks she is still asleep, or at least dreaming still.”  At the end of all things, he is there.


**Horizon**  
by Charis

_Disclaimer: _Battlestar Galactica_ and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing._

_Notes: I wonder if I'm incapable of writing happy endings. This is what happens when my brain latches onto "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again," and keeps running. Vague unspecified future._

_"Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."  
- R.W. Raymond_

_"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."  
- Harriet Beecher Stowe_

She always thought she would have more time.

That was, all considered, a foolish notion; Cottle had told her that she should be measuring what was left to her in weeks, perhaps months. But the weeks have somehow dwindled to scant days, and since she can no longer hide the fact that she is dying, she must face the truth herself as well. For all that she has known she will never see Earth, she has been so focussed on ignoring her body and the little time remaining that she's almost forgotten. Now, her body reminds her with a vengeance that this is the one fight she cannot win.

The last days she spends confined in bed, _Dark Day_ open on her lap, though reading is greater effort than she will admit. She drifts in and out of consciousness, and whether her waking or sleeping dreams are more vivid, not even she can say. The only constants are Cottle's twice-daily visits, and Billy, who sits quietly in the corner - Billy, who has refused to leave even though she is no longer the president and he has no formal duty to discharge. His loyalty is an unexpected gift, but she cannot find the strength to thank him.

Lee Adama visits at several points - Captain Apollo no longer, now that the elections are through. She feels more proud of him than she has any right to; at least she knows her people will be in good hands. (Were they ever her people? She's not sure, especially in this twilight haze. Such answers are no longer clear, though the rest of the universe becomes transparent. Even when she closes her eyes, all she sees is light.)

She has other visitors, people offering condolences, real or fabricated. Lieutenant Thrace is there one time when she wakes, expression searching and unfathomable, but the girl does not speak, and leaves once she sees Laura watching her. Dr Baltar babbles on about what a tragedy this is - empty, pretty words, until (thank the gods, she thinks wearily) Billy gently but firmly escorts him out. Even Tom Zarek stops in briefly, and she is too tired for animosity: he is polite, treating her as befits a worthy adversary, and she says little. There are others, too, so many of them, wanting to see president or prophet, but surely not the dying woman.

Of those she expected, only Commander Adama does not come. Perhaps he is busy, or holds a grudge against her for drawing his son into politics, or a hundred old arguments still lie between them in an insurmountable gulf. That does get to her: she had hoped to set things as right as possible here, at the end of everything. But the days bleed away without his visit, lost in a haze of pain as she gives up the drugs. She and Cottle argue about that, but she wants as much coherence and dignity as she can in the end, and that means eschewing all but the weakest of painkillers. The constant agony seems to sharpen her awareness, or perhaps the cancer has crawled up into her brain after all, and its is the serpent's voice that whispers in her ear as she wavers on the edge of death.

She dreams of a desert, holding sand cupped in her palms, trying to keep it from slipping away, but her hands are translucent and the grains pass through them. She wakes feeling as though her skin has grown tissue-thin, and her soul will burn through it at any second. It is oddly exhilarating, and momentarily drives back the pain.

Later, she dreams of dancing, light as eiderdown or flame over dry leaves, but she cannot see the man partnering her. The touch of his hands is oddly familiar, the smile she can somehow sense, the strength of his body so close to hers. A murmured sound - her name? - stretches between dream and reality, though, and when plucked jolts her back into wakefulness.

At first she thinks she is still asleep, or at least dreaming still, but then fire lances along her wasted nerves, and she knows she is not. Speech has been an effort, but she manages, "Bill."

Too much effort to call him Commander; hopefully he will forgive her the liberty of his name. "Sit?" she asks and, when he does, his expression still granite-carved, "Sorry ..."

"Me too," he replies, the simple words assuring her that her meaning was understood. She wonders briefly why she worried; he has always seemed to understand the subtext to what she says. He reaches out, finds one of her hands where it rests on the book, touches it gently. "I just wish -"

"Shh." She turns her fingers slightly to lace them through his, sees that usually imperturbable face soften subtly. Suddenly, dream and waking crash together in a flash of realisation that makes her heart twist in her chest, the stab of pain wholly different. "Sorry," she repeats, only this time it is choked, sad.

His thumb brushes across her palm almost absently; his eyes are dark, hooded, and she can see her own sadness echoed there a thousand-fold. "I could have loved you," he says, in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper, "so much ..."

_'I know,'_ she wants to say, _'and if I had only let you ...'_ She wants to reassure him that, in the universe's next chapter, they may meet again, and that then she will allow herself to love him in return, to have the time for that luxury, but she lacks the strength. She squeezes his hand, hardly even a faint pressure, and smiles up at him. There is so much to say, but she is tired. When she wakes again, perhaps she will have the strength.

Her eyes drift closed. She does not see the tears that track down William Adama's face as he continues to clutch her hand, nor Billy quietly closing the door behind him as he leaves.

_- finis -_


End file.
